


return to square one

by ivyrobinson



Category: Next to Normal - Kitt/Yorkey
Genre: Angst, F/M, Teen Angst, slightly AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-11
Updated: 2019-02-11
Packaged: 2019-10-26 01:27:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17736416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivyrobinson/pseuds/ivyrobinson
Summary: the five nights henry has to come pick natalie up from clubs and the days leading up to it





	return to square one

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this about five years ago, and it's vaguely au-ish as Henry moved to Seattle from London six years earlier and is blond. that's really the only change from canon

Henry was wary at first, but he was quick to at least try or consider new things. Much easier than it would have been to convince Natalie to do something new. But she had let go. Or snapped. She wasn’t quite sure how to define it yet.

But did it matter? _Did anything fucking matter anymore or ever?_

It was the sort of existential question that Henry loved anyone asking or maybe just her but it was the sort of question that would make him light up his bong and he would wax poetic about the oversoul or Plato’s perfect form or some sort of bullshit like that. 

She liked the way he looked with his arm stretched out behind him, his head tipped back slightly and his eyelids heavy as he rambled on philosophically and stoned. It made her want to reach over and press her palm against his cheek and absorb the essence of him.

It could be love or it could be the second hand high. 

Sometimes he would explore existential nihilism though he was not a skeptical person and liked to disprove such theories. Other times he would just start singing that song from Rent that said to forget regret or life was yours to miss before breaking out in a giggle. 

She would roll her eyes and say he was full of potential, and he’d say she sounded like all of his progress reports. 

The drugs she took were not the same drugs he took. She remembered that look of wariness as well as she took out pills to mix with her Red Bull. Off his look, she had said “They’re my moms, it’s not like she’s using them.” 

Then her mood had improved as the chemicals worked their way throughout her body and she started breathing regularly and she relaxed against him and he seemed to lose the look of wariness etched on his face. 

She remembered the first time he took those drugs. After she suggested they go out, be teenagers, have fun, get in trouble, lose themselves in the music. Then she had reached out and grabbed his hand and tugged him forward because she knew Henry would never actually say no to her. 

It hadn’t been the drugs that made her an awful person, it had been the abuse of power. 

Natalie could get as anxious as her mind would allow, she could fret and analyze and come up with a 100 or more scenarios of the hows and whys he could leave her. How she wasn’t worth it, didn’t deserve the time or energy he put into to her. How it was fake, how he just wanted sex and hadn’t she given that up easily? Or maybe he just wanted to see what an American girl was like before going back to England. Or any other theory she could come up with.

But she knew. Even if she refused to acknowledge it, she knew. 

So he followed her, even though he wasn’t weak or easily manipulated, and she watched as he dry swallowed the pills. And the music swallowed them up and they were normal, and they were free and she wasn’t so alone anymore.

Henry had this way of looking concerned she hadn’t ever seen on him before or maybe she hadn’t noticed.

When you spent your whole life being told to be solely concerned with somebody else, it made those moments away make you more selfish, focused more on yourself. Maybe she didn’t focus enough on Henry as an actual person. 

But the worry was there, settled somewhere deep in his bones, and frown lines would form on his face without his lips without them actually ever turning downwards. He’d bit his lip and look at her out of the corner of his eye. A glimpse of blue. 

She would avert his gaze once the worry started to seep through. 

The first night was a Friday, and she remembered most of it. She remembered walking with Henry to the bus stop and taking it towards West Seattle. Natalie may have researched clubs on her phone as the bus made its way through the streets. Henry had laughed and kissed her cheek and told her it was very Nata. 

She wasn’t quite certain how she felt about being any previous version of herself, so she had tucked away her phone, and he had given a tiny quirk of his head before reaching over and covering her hand with his. 

She remembered taking the drugs and the way the sharp edges of her personality and her feelings got blurry and soft. She remembered gasping as she felt the music and stupidly proclaimed that she had never heard this song before and she loved it. Henry had pulled her into a hug, and she remembered the warm feeling of him and how he was mixed in with the smell of sweat and smoke of the club. 

She had fallen asleep on the bus trip back to her house. And hadn’t woken up again until her alarm went off and she was in her own bed still in her skirt and t-shirt but the covers pulled over her and a bottle of ibuprofen and water on her nightstand. 

Natalie wondered if Henry would ever not think of her first. It was an uncomfortable, itchy thought. She wondered if she would ever be anything but a huge, ungrateful, contradicting mess. Years, a lifetime really, of wanting to matter to someone, of wanting to be first in someone’s eyes rather than second to her dead brother in her mother’s, and second to her mother’s illness in her father’s, and here she was upset about it. 

And she wanted to come first to Henry, but she didn’t want that to be true. (It could only be downhill now, the other shoe would have to drop, any other cliche was the only direction this could go and hadn’t Natalie fallen enough already?) 

She was comfortable in her skin of discontent. 

But, still, she took the ibuprofen and drank the water before taking a shower and changing into jeans and a sweatshirt she had stolen from Henry at some point that advertised some law firm. Most likely his mother’s but she had never retained what Henry had introduced her as, and all she could remember was registering that she did not go by Grant. 

Then she walked to the bus stop to take to Henry’s house. 

She expected to feel like hell. She expected to have a heavy, groggy feeling and the tinge of regret and disappointment to hum through her.

Instead she just felt...light. Like she had done something and it had turned out normal and she was an actual teenager for once.

Maybe even something akin to happiness. 

It was a weird, unidentifiable feeling regardless. 

She rang the doorbell, and a few moments later Henry opened the door, blinking and tilting his head when he saw her. 

“Good morning?” He told her. “Do we have plans?” 

“I thought you told me we don’t need plans to see each other,” She returned, standing on her toes to kiss him in greeting. 

He laughed and shut the door behind her, “So you just wanted to see me?” 

Natalie pressed her tongue against the back of her teeth as she considered this. She was a sixteen year old girl with a boy she dug. 

“Yeah, I did.” 

Henry pulled her back in and kissed her, and she could feel that his mouth was still smiling. Henry was so easily made happy by simple things, she wondered why people didn’t do them more for him.

Herself included. 

“I was just about to pour some cereal for breakfast if you want,” he offered. 

Natalie shrugged and nodded, following him out into the kitchen where he pulled out an oversized bowl, and filling it with Corn Pops. They went back out to the living room, and settled on the couch, with the cereal in between them. She tucked her feet in on the couch, while he propped his on the ottoman. 

Henry turned on the television and continued on with the introduction of Disney he had been showing her for the past two months or so. Today was The Rescuers and she noticed that Henry had a pattern of enjoying the ones with animals as the main characters more than the ones with people. She wondered if that was why he hung out alone so often, preferring the company of humans over animals.

She couldn’t blame him, if it was, though the house seemed all the lonelier now. 

She stole a glance over at him and he caught her looking. 

“What?” He asked her. 

“It’s stupid,” she told him, but then told him anyway. Because she had let go. “Just when I was younger and would watch those stupid reruns of like Saved by the Bell or whatever, this is kind of what I imagined being a teenager would be like.” More so than calls from Costco to keep her mother from being arrested or her parents missing a recital or a swim meet because either her mother was off her meds or on new meds or her father had to bring her to a doctor’s appointment or simply had forgot. Or that she wouldn’t have any friends because she had a sharp personality and pushed away anyone that could possibly be invited over to her house. 

“You imagined watching Disney movies with an English bloke?” He teased. 

“Not exactly…” She said, “I always thought it would be with an Irish one.” 

“Ouch, that’s harsh.” 

She laughed at his exaggerated wounded expression. “Just, you know, boyfriend. Parties. Stupid stuff.” 

“Oh, well, here,” Henry told her before faking a yawn to stretch out his arm behind her. “To add to the experience.” 

“You’re a good boy to date sometimes, Henry Grant,” she told him before resting her head against his shoulder. 

“Shh,” he told her, squeezing her shoulder. “That nearly sounded like a compliment, Natalie Goodman.” 

She reached into the bowl and threw a corn pop which bounced off his nose before settling back against him. 

She’d like to imagine this was really what life was like. A boyfriend, a movie, teasing, intimacy. No angst, no dead brother in front of her drowning her in his shadow, no mother being zapped in a mental institute.

But Natalie didn’t think about those things anymore. 

She just had to remind herself so she could unclench her fist and release her nails from digging into her skin. 

“You okay?” Henry whispered to her. 

She wondered how someone who had known her in such a brief amount of time could recognize the changes of her mood. 

“Yeah,” she said, tilting her head up to kiss him. 

Natalie could take all the drugs she wanted but this was her favorite distraction. 

Then she pulled away, biting her lip and suggesting they should go to his room. He had teasingly asked if she didn’t want the real teenage experience of potential getting caught by a parent but he had stood up as he teased and helped pull her up off the couch. 

Natalie woke up several hours later, with a weight on her heart and a stone in her stomach. Images assaulted her of blood stained tiles in the bathroom, pink water in the tub, and chairs of electricity. She bit her tongue, attempting to not let her uneven breaths come out, but it made it worse. 

She wriggled out from underneath Henry’s arm, attempting to not disturb him. She reached down pulling up her pair of jeans and reaching into the pocket for the baggie she had thrown in there just in case. 

She took one and then looked back at Henry, and took another. She looked for anything to wash it down with and realized there was no stray red bull cans or even bottles of water because it was Henry and he had a cleaning lady to keep such things out of his room. So she winced and dry swallowed them both. 

It caused her to let out a small cough, because her throat already felt closed up and dry from the anxiety. But on the second try the pills went down and she felt herself relax a fraction just from the knowledge they would work their way through her system. 

She looked back, and saw Henry blinking his eyes open.

Natalie pointed at her neck before he could ask any questions, “Tickle in my throat.” 

She wondered when she started to lie to Henry.

Henry nodded, pulling on some clothes before disappearing from the room. Natalie pulled his sweatshirt and her underwear back on before laying back down. The warmed, relaxed feeling was working her way through her body. 

She thought of her dreams earlier and felt the itch of restlessness and anxiety though it couldn’t find its way to the surface to bother her. She should get up move. Fill herself up to the conflicting state of numbness and electricity. This state of idleness would only bring all the bad things back. 

Natalie sat back up when she heard Henry reenter the room. He handed her a bottle of water, and the urge for her to cry bulldozed its way past the haze of Xanax. She unscrewed the cap and swallowed the urge and the water down. 

She wondered why in her entire lifetime of being second to a dead person, of all the missed recitals and forgotten birthdays and of all the times she sat outside her school while a teacher looked at her pityingly and tried to get ahold of her parents, why Henry’s kindness and thoughtfulness was what made her feel the shittiest she has ever felt. 

He was regarding her intently, with his head tilted and she wondered if there was something about her that was broadcasting that she was stoned and he could tell. She felt the distant nudge of anger over how could he even judge her for being stoned when he was the one that had originally taught her the feeling?

This was all probably in her head and why she shouldn’t stay idle for too long. 

“Thanks,” she told him, setting the water bottle back down. She reached her hands up to clasp his, and he helped pull her up from the bed. 

“I asked for a minifridge in here for water related emergencies,” he told her, folding her in a hug. She tried to think if he was affectionate with others or if he just liked to hold her close. But then again, who did he have to be affectionate with if not her? “But Fina said I already a bathroom and if I had access to food I would never leave my bedroom.” 

She tried to remember who Fina was and settled on his housekeeper. Natalie squeezed him back before ducking out of his embrace and grabbing her jeans. 

To stay alive she had to keep moving. The drugged out version of her wasn’t that far different from academic overachiever her. She just channelled that energy in different outlets.

He was regarding her oddly as she shimmied into her jeans, and she was nearly paralyzed with the fear that not only was she caught- for lying, for taking her mother’s drugs, but he would confront her as well. She tried to muster up the courage that came with the knowledge that he had no leg to stand on. (Minus that to her knowledge he had never lied to her, as well as was rather upfront about his own illicit drug use.) Instead, he reached up and tugged on the edge of her sweatshirt. 

“Is this mine?” 

The muffled panic that had worked its way under her rushed out of her just as quickly. Natalie was caught alright, but not for what she had feared. She had forgotten she had thrown on his mother’s law firm sweatshirt. 

She wondered why she did things like steal Henry’s clothes and then advertise it in such an obvious manner. Was she so starved for attention that she did these things that she knew were wrong in hopes of getting caught? 

That was a thought too fucked up to contemplate in her current state of mind. 

Not that Henry necessarily cared that she stole his shirts. 

“This?” She looked down at the sweatshirt. “No, you missed the moment where your mother and I became BFFs and she gave this as a gift of friendship.” 

He laughed and pressed a kiss against her cheek. If she just asked him for a shirt he would probably go out and buy her a dozen. “Ah yes, tokens of friendship. Isabelle Maddox is world renowned for those.” 

Isabelle. Natalie didn’t think she knew his mother’s name before this moment. 

It was on the tip of her tongue to ask him what exactly his mother bought his for presents, the Xanax making it difficult to deny her obvious curiosity regarding everything about him. Instead she pushed out the words she made herself want to say instead. 

“We should go out.” 

“Ah, sweet Nat, we’ve been going out for months,” he teased. “Glad to see you’ve finally caught on to our relationship.”

She rolled her eyes at his lame joke, but tugged on his hands. “No, actually out. Let’s find another club.” 

Natalie was fighting lethargy at the moment and wanted to take another pill to balance out the Xanax but didn’t. Not yet, at least. She wondered if Henry would tell her she had a problem. She wondered how long and how often he’s had a relationship with weed.

She could read the hesitation on his face and instinctively thrust her lower lip out. Apparently some things didn’t need to be taught. Anyone could become one of those girls Natalie typically despised. 

Henry rolled his eyes, because at least he knew when he was being manipulated. “Yeah, okay.” He sighed dramatically. “It’s Saturday night, what else are two teenagers to do?” 

She was certain he had alternative answers to that, but he wasn’t offering it so they finished getting dressed. It didn’t matter what she looked like at the club, it was all darkness and flashing lights after all. 

They took the bus again, following the winding roads into the heart of the city. Henry chewed his lip and stared out the window. She reached over and slipped her hand into his, trying to give him a reassuring squeeze. 

This was natural. This was fine. This was fun.

It was her new mantra, after all. 

At the first club, she washed down the rest of her pills with a shot. It was green and looked electric so she hoped it would make her feel electric. She pulled Henry along with her into the mass of throbbing music and bodies. 

Normally this type of crowd would be enough to set off her anxiety, but while she was electric in all the right places, she was numb where she should be as well. 

She laughed out loud, giddy with delight at having conquered that particular beast. She had won, and she knew the feeling was only ever temporary but she was riding that wave. She danced, she jumped, she threw her arms around Henry.

Natalie had the vague recognition that Henry was bored, or at least uninterested in the club so she would grab his hand and tug him through the club, bringing him into another one. It was breathless excitement. The constant moving. The anonymity. 

This was what happiness must feel like. 

At the third club Henry bought her a drink, but it was only a bottle of water. She could make out the muffled sound of his voice forming the words that she was going to dehydrate herself. Even in this fucked up drug haze, the best way to get through to her was to appeal to her rational side.

She had studied so hard on what drugs could mix with what and what not to take and how much to take or not take of something so it wouldn’t be too much. But as the night wore on and she cared less and less about anything and everything.

Natalie drank the water Henry gave her and felt her high diluting. It didn’t seem fair, this balance that the world forced on her. In order to stay alive, she had to come down.

She felt sweaty and messy and her body felt heavy from everything she had swallowed down it.

That night she woke up in increments. The chilly air hitting her when Henry took her outside. She looked at him blurrily in return, he was there but not there. Or she was there but not there. She woke up on the bus. Her legs draped over Henry’s, and her cheek pressed against his shoulder. Again when she felt the softness of her bed underneath her and Henry’s kiss against her forehead.

Finally, late in the morning when she woke up to see a trashcan next to her bed, a bottle of water and ibuprofen on her nightstand again along with a note asking her to call when she woke with no signature. She sat up and regretted it, but saw that a chair had been moved near her bed. 

She wondered how long he had watched over her. 

Natalie didn’t call him but rather sent him a simple text message that merely read “thanks”, and turned back over in bed and slept most of the day away. 

When she woke up again, the sky was darker and she had a missed call from her father and a voice mail updating her on how her mother’s treatment was going. Natalie wished she had stayed asleep. But sleeping for so long had taken the exhaustion out of her so now she just felt restless. 

There was a text message in her inbox from several hours before from Henry that simply said “come over?” and there was no other message waiting for her. She climbed out of bed, and got in the shower, going through the motions of being a normal person. She thought of the pills, the ones stolen and waiting for her in the bottom of her purse. Most days, she just wanted to be numb but alive. 

It was a difficult balance to keep. 

But she relistened to her father’s voicemail, and pressed the right number to send him a voicemail right back rather than calling him and having to talk to him in person. She lied like he had lied and said that sounded great, she was sure this would be the one and that she was fine at home alone. 

Then she grabbed her purse and shoes and took the bus to Henry’s house. She thought of the clubs, pulsing and alive in a different part of the city. How the wires in her body still hummed but as though they were moving through a frayed circuit. 

Logically, she realized she couldn’t go to clubs every night and lose herself. She thought of Henry, bored and miserable the night before, and how she could only remember glimpses and pieces of getting home and the chair by her bed. 

She had school tomorrow, anyway. It wouldn’t be practical.

So she showed up at Henry’s house on a Sunday evening, and it was once again devoid of any sign of life. She knocked on the door, and several moments later Henry opened the door. His eyes were red and unfocused and his movements heavy and slow. 

Natalie was secretly glad he had remembered how he coped with his issues, so she was fairly certain a lecture on her own was not forthcoming. Her mood lifted slightly without the fear of an impending confrontation about to happen. 

“I just woke up a little while ago,” she said, by way of explanation to her late response to his text. 

He nodded, “I figured. Better?” 

When Henry was stoned, he was slower to talk, and his accent flattened out. There was only a hint of English in his words now when he spoke to her. 

“Yeah,” and she couldn’t tell if she was lying or not. “Thank you.” 

Then she wound her arms around him, tilting her head up to kiss him in appreciation. He kissed her back, reminding her of their first kisses when his mouth was more smoke and weed than honey. 

Their movements were unmatched, their tones off. They ended up on the sofa, their mouths fused together. She still felt restless and needed movement. She wanted the blur, for things to move faster. Henry kissed her leisurely, as though their was no destination for him except for the sliding of his tongue in her mouth. 

Natalie wanted to writhe, lose herself and explode into oblivion. Henry merely wanted to explore the contours of her mouth. It was nice, but left her with too much room to think. 

Eventually she pulled away, finally giving up her original intent to use sex as her escapism. Instead, she asked him if he had anymore, and she gestured up towards him room. He looked somewhat hesitant and she rambled about sleeping too much and being restless and wanting to calm herself so she could sleep, even though she didn’t owe him an explanation. And he was higher than hell so it wasn’t as though he could judge her. 

So he brought her upstairs and she took a few hits off his bong. Disappointed that it didn’t work as well that first night she had tried it with the apple. Disappointed it didn’t work its way through her like her own pills did. Disappointed because she couldn’t tell if she was feeling paranoid or was just thinking she did because she remembered that it was a possible side effect.

So instead she ate away the uneasy feelings while they watched some show she had never heard of filled with incomprehensible accents and eventually she turned over on his bed to see that Henry had passed out sometime recently. 

So she slid out of his bed, putting away all his drug paraphernalia before she left as an echo of helping him in the way he had helped her all weekend and took the bus back to her house. It was emptier and larger than it had ever felt and she regretted leaving the presence of Henry at his house. 

So instead she did homework to occupy her loneliness and by the time her alarm went off the next morning she still hadn’t fallen asleep. She attempted to feel successful at life that she had stayed away from the clubs and nonorganic drugs for the night but mostly she felt like a mess. And that it hadn’t even been worth it at all. 

Natalie went to school like she was supposed to, went to classes like she was supposed to, remembered to hold Henry’s hand in the hallway like she was supposed to, stood on her tip toes and gave him a peck on the lips in between classes like she was supposed to. 

But she didn’t feel it or really go through it at all. It was all just routine and Natalie excelled at routine. Sure, Henry still tilted his head to the side and studied her as though he knew something was off but couldn’t quite tell what. 

At the end of the day he took the bus home with her and they did their homework in her kitchen and Henry made up some snacks from whatever was in the pantry. Natalie understood him better now than she had when she first met him, and the appeal of jazz. The art of creation. Henry was really good at pulling out something from what seemed like an empty void. 

Like her pantry. Like her. 

Afterwards, they sat on her sofa and watched television and she started feeling more like she was being baby sat than hanging out with her boyfriend. Like he was only sticking around at the moment because he was afraid to leave her alone. (It may be fair, she was afraid to be alone. She was afraid to stick around in the company of Henry as well.) 

Realizing, there was no parents coming home crutch to fall back on, and thinking of the long night stretched out in front of her with limited options if Henry stayed, Natalie claimed a desire for shower, bed due to a headache. 

Henry kissed her cheek and told her to contact him if she needed anything. Natalie needed everything and that was the issue. 

So she stood inside her house that her father had designed himself, surrounded by the silence and aloneness of it all. She thought of how often she had wished to be away from the noise of her home, the chaos of her parents issue. To not be surrounded by the ghost of a brother she had never known. 

And here she was, alone in her house with all of that, and she hated every moment. 

But she also had the freedom to do as she pleased, and didn’t have to drag Henry down with her. Natalie had done plenty of things on her own prior to acquiring a boyfriend. Why couldn’t going to clubs be one? All she had to do was make sure she didn’t push herself to the point of exhaustion like she did when she knew she had Henry to get her home.

So she went and took half the drugs she normally did and felt the buzz and went home when exhaustion crept up on her. And she didn’t need Henry to drag her home or tuck her in and when she got home she slept for three whole hours before her alarm went off for school. She felt so accomplished.

Natalie Goodman had beaten the system. 

She felt nearly as giddy as she could possibly be. 

She bumped shoulders with Henry and even smiled at him, and he sort of blinked at her in response, his eyes looked red but otherwise he looked and smelled clean. When he kissed her good morning he only tasted of honey. Maybe he just had trouble sleeping the night before or something. 

She sat with him in the music room and listened as he played and improvised. It was nice though too quiet, too still. She was secretly, horribly relieved when he said he had dinner to go to with his mother that night but offered to cancel if she wanted. And she said she’d be fine and she told him to text her when he was done to tell her how it went because it seemed like the sort of thing she was supposed to say.

And she went home and did her homework because even though she fucked up her last recital beyond repair she still was dedicated to the possibility of getting into Yale, or anywhere away from there. From exactly where she was at the moment because without it she had no future. 

Then she took the bus and her drugs and found other clubs and danced though it felt colder and more lonely than it had before because there was no one to bounce her energy off. And even while high she still wasn’t comfortable making friends with strangers. So she took more drugs and a shot or two and willed herself to be anyone different. 

She missed Henry, though she wouldn’t allow such a thing to creep into her normally but without him other boys, no men, took her dancing as an invitation to dance with her and they stared at her in a way that made her know she wasn’t as invisible as she had always been. The anxiety in her screamed and pounded at the cellar door Xanax had boxed it in and she would leave as they leered at her. Not seeing a person, but just as an easy target. 

Natalie Goodman wasn’t an easy anything. 

At the next club a rough hand brushed the inside of her skirt against her thigh and she shoved at him in response, pushing him back in the crowd. Then she disappeared out of the club and ran. She took the next bus and it took her in the wrong direction so she got off at the next one, feeling marginally more calm and managed to take the correct bus system home. 

She could feel herself hyperventilating inside but the gasps of breath wouldn’t make her way to her throat or her mouth. It was as though she had shrunk and was trapped in some hollow frame that only sort of looked like her. She went back inside her house, peeling off her clothes like she could peel off the bad experience and threw on a stolen tshirt and a pair of shorts and imitated hyperventilating like if it happened, if it could just get out it would be over with and she would be relieved. 

It didn’t and she was too numb, so instead she stuck her finger down her throat and made herself throw up just so she could feel something and the next morning she woke up on the cold bathroom floor fifteen minutes past the start of first period.

Natalie checked her phone and saw she had missed another call and voicemail from her father. She wondered if he was concerned he never seemed to catch her in person or if he just thought it was typical. She frowned when she searched her phone for any missed messages from Henry and didn’t find any. He was the one supposed to be good at this relationship stuff. 

She tried to muster up the energy to worry about Henry, but found she just couldn’t. Then she felt like so much shit. Natalie never knew whether to push him away as hard as she could or cling to him tightly. 

She got up and brushed her hair and threw on clothes and made it in time for first period to be emptying out of the classroom. She fell into step with Henry wordlessly. 

“You overslept?” She had no idea if it was a question or an accusation. 

She sort of nodded in response and made a noise that sounded somewhat in the affirmative. 

Instead of going for her hand, which she was already prepared to pull away before he even reached for it. Henry had a way of reading her secrets she had yet to be comfortable with. Instead his hand rested on the small of her back, and her body instinctively relaxed. Involuntarily, even. 

She thought of the night before and the guy and her leg and the feeling of panic and nausea. Impulsively, she reached over and pulled Henry into a hug. Over as quickly as it had started. He looked sort of bewildered at the sudden contact. 

“It was a long night,” she said by way of explanation. 

“Me too,” he said and tensed and felt like shit again because she had already forgotten the lack of contact from him the night before. “Sorry...I killed the battery to my phone waiting in my mum’s office and then didn’t feel like talking to anyone once I plugged it in so I just went to bed.” 

Henry looked about as rough as he had the day before, so she reached over and squeezed his hand before they went into their next classroom. 

And continued on with the motions of her normal routine. Class, lunch, more class, piano after school. She couldn’t remember the last time she really played rather than just listened to Henry play. It had to have been recently. Or not. 

She went to grab a quick meal with Henry after school. She wasn’t hungry, barely ate and Henry never talked about the night before. She wondered if she still smelled like club. He offered to stay, she said she was fine and he could leave and she had showering and homework to do. 

She made sure to text him periodically through the night, even though communication was never her strong point and she doubted that it ever would be. Then she said she was going to bed but really she grabbed her house keys and her purse and a thing of mace because Natalie learned from her mistakes.

Or at least she thought she did because here she was, disappearing into the cloak of clubs again. 

And she loved it. The throb, the darkness, the oblivion, the thrill of knowing what she was doing was fucked up and wrong but so was everyone else in the club. She liked her invisibility here and how people saw through her and didn’t even glance in her direction even as they poured her a shot. 

She loved the music and how they notes didn’t flow together rigidly like they did when she had to play on the piano. She liked the easy flow of chemicals through her, changing who she was. Someone different, someone more free, someone more numb but more alive. 

It was exhilarating and it was exhausting.

It was all an illusion.

Because of course she wasn’t invisible. She was young, she was incapacitated and she was female. People’s gaze may have looked through her but they certainly noticed her. She was just prey and not a person. Men bumped against her purposefully and she would turn her body to get away from it. Another pill, another layer of numbness against the outside world. 

She forgot to keep track. 

The familiar panic as bodies closed around her, the pressing against a menacing form, her ass being brushed upon and groped. When a guy came up behind her, sliding his arm around her, his fingers dipping below the collar of her shirt and moving closer to her bra as he greeted her, she stole the energy from her muted panic to elbow him and slip from his grip before finding herself locked in the bathroom, throwing up the unwanted advance. 

She had to get out of there. Natalie had outstayed her welcome, soaked up in the buzz in a greedy manner. She should’ve left early, while it was still good. Natalie didn’t know how to take anything in moderation. 

She stared at the door unsure if she could get home in her high or her frantic numbness, even more unsure if she could make it through the crowd and if the groper was waiting out there for her to get back at her elbow and her reluctance to take his unwanted sexual advances. The panic was raw and real and undoing the bonds of drugs she had taken to counteract it. 

So she made a split section decision because there was one person to help her, who was there for her or she thought he was. 

Henry answered before the second ring complete, and she wondered if she had woken him or if he had yet to sleep though she had claimed to have gone to sleep hours before. 

“Nat?” His voice only reflected light concern. She felt awful for lying to him and wanted to hang up and pretend like she really was asleep in her bed at the moment. 

“I need you to come get me,” is what came out instead in a gasp. As though her brain was throwing it out there before she could work out a way to not say it. 

There was a long pause and some shuffling on the other end. She wondered how much of the club he could hear on his end. She had tuned it out with her fear. 

Then, “Where are you?”

She closed her eyes and tried to retrace her steps. Where the fuck was she? She had taken a bus, transferred once..or was it twice? “I’m…” Natalie attempted to take a steadying breath. She could do this, she was capable. “Skylark?”

“Outside or inside?” He asked and she could hear the hollow sound his floors made when you crossed them with shoes on. She wondered if he had been home alone too, or if it even mattered.

“In the bathroom.” 

“Stay there,” he said and he sounded more tired than he had when he had answered the phone. “I’m on my way.” 

She had no intention to move and some worry that she had said the wrong name or he wouldn’t be able to find it or figure out what bathroom she was in and how would he get into the ladies room anyway? 

Natalie put more thought and energy trying to figure out Henry’s rescue of her than the situation that she needed to be rescued in. Or she didn’t need to be rescued really. She just needed a sober ride and someone to block her from the friendly potential rapist outside the bathroom. 

About twenty or so minutes later she had her answers of yes, Henry could find her, and to get into the ladies room he simply walked in. Natalie couldn’t remember if she heard other people come in or other stalls open but there was a nonreaction to an Englishman in a club bathroom. 

She opened the door to her stall before he could start looking for her and he reached out pulling her into a hug. Natalie sort of swayed but let herself be swept up in him. His jacket was cold from outside but everything else about him was the feeling of warmth and Henry. 

“It’s okay, love,” she could hear him say barely over the sound of the music. 

Natalie wanted to argue, to rely on her old lines of: her mom was in the hospital, being electrocuted, she had fucked her chances of graduating at the end of Junior year and potentially her chances of getting into Yale, her brother was dead, her father was foolishly optimistic about the upswing in her mother’s mental health time and time again and Natalie was the first in a long line of failed experiments to cure her. 

Not much had ever been okay in Natalie Goodman’s life. 

But she didn’t lash out at Henry, instead she closed her eyes and soaked in the steadiness of him. Before Henry, she wasn’t even sure who she would call had she found herself in this situation. Even if her parents were home...well, her dad would be off already having answered a call about her mom down the street or at the store and would be taking care of that instead. 

He pulled away to unzip his jacket, pulling it over her shoulders. He was wearing a red fleece underneath and she wondered if it was done purposefully with the intent of giving her his winter one. His blond hair was messy, fluffy and sticking up in different directions. He wore his glasses, which were slightly foggy from the sudden changes of temperature between outside and the club. 

She should say thank you. She should offer up an explanation as to why she wasn’t asleep in her bed but rather in the middle of some club, hiding in the bathroom and high. Instead she just pulled his jacket tighter around her and simply said, “Take me home.” 

Natalie followed him blindly out of the club, avoiding eye contact with the other people there, thinking of Henry as a shield in case the guy from earlier found her. 

She sobered up more when they hit the chilly outside and suddenly she was even more grateful for the use of his jacket. And felt worse that she had woken him, made him come to some club to get her and taken his source of warmth from him. 

The inside of his car was still warm since he hadn’t spent much time in the club and she stared out the window. 

Her reaction seemed a touch overdramatic now. But it was probably easy to think that, now in the safety of Henry’s car. 

She braced herself for questions, for some sort explosion, or at least a lecture. 

Instead, all she felt was the gentle brush of his knuckles stroking her arm and she reflexively turned to look at him. 

“Are you okay?” 

She wasn’t sure if he meant in general or from tonight or about her mother or about...anything. Every question had the same lie as an answer. “Yeah.” 

Henry stared a beat longer as though he were afraid to ask her a question, and then he turned away, starting his car back up and pulled onto the street. Natalie looked back out the window, counting the minutes until he pulled back into her driveway. She had her keys ready and the door open before he could come to a complete stop. 

“Good night,” She said in a rush. She wasn’t rude or cruel enough to leave without saying anything, though she was afraid what would happen if she lingered. What he’d say, what she’d feel. 

“Do you want me to come inside?” He asked, like she knew he would. 

“No, I’m fine now,” Natalie told him, sliding out of the car. “You should go home and get some sleep. Sorry for waking you.” 

“You’re no bother,” Henry told her and it was hard to imagine that he wasn’t lying. 

She shut the door and went into the house, standing with her back to the door until she saw the lights disappear from her driveway. 

Natalie skipped school that day, calling out in a weak imitation of her mother, but considering a) her mother hardly to never dealt with people in her school they didn’t have much to compare it to and b) Natalie was a more or less perfect student, recent meltdown notwithstanding, and c) the recent family troubles made schools ask less questions. 

She only even made this effort on the off chance they attempted to track her father or mother down with this day of skipping. 

She wanted to spend the day in bed with the covers over her head and cease to be a person and cease to be this exact person and cease to have someone in her life she could destroy as easily as her parents had destroyed her. 

Natalie shut away her phone, ignoring the notifications she may or may not get from Henry. She shut all the lights off in her house in case he stopped by at any point and thought she was home. Maybe he thought she went to go visit her parents at the institute. 

Henry knew her better than that. 

Instead she cleaned, she worked, she used her anxiety to fuel productivity and ignored the mixture of disappointment, anger and sense of relief when she didn’t hear Henry’s car pull up. She shouldn’t count on him like she did. It wasn’t good for her. 

When had she made the switch from being protective of herself in this relationship to Henry being the one she was trying to protect from her?

So Natalie told herself she would be smarter, have a better plan, leave earlier, take less drugs (just enough to shift the buzz from anxiety to pleasure or at least numbness), stay away from the skeevier people at the club. 

So she did. She went to a different club, not so much in the gut of the scene. Less crowded. She tried to dance by girls. She counted the minutes between pills. She took half the pills she usually did in a single gulp. 

See, it had been a foolproof plan. 

Completely and utterly. 

Except she didn’t count the pills, just the moments until she could take another hit. It was like the difference between pouring a bowl of chips versus eating them straight out of the bag. The number got lost. 

Or maybe the other two night nights got her on edge or maybe she was building up an immunity and the effect of the drugs wore off quicker. 

Either way she ended up huddled in a bathroom stall, throwing up and begging Henry to come get her when her stomach had allowed her to breath without heaving. 

This time she met him outside and pulled open the door to his car before he had fully come to a stop.

“I won’t…” She started to say she won’t make a habit of this, but for some reason that seemed like the kind of wording that would cause him further concern and cause him to give her that look that saw right through her. “I just didn’t feel well is all.”

Henry chewed on his lip and pulled back out onto the street. “It’s no bother, really.” 

Natalie let out a breath and looked out the window. She had been a bother since she had been born. She wondered what would have become of her mother, had she not had the complication of postpartum depression on top of the grief she was already suffering from. Had not had another child around, as a constant reminder of the one she had lost. The one she had really wanted. One that was similar but completely different.

Or even if she had been born a boy. A true replacement for the son her parents lost. 

She thought of Henry, with his own set of distant parents (emotionally in the case of his mother, physically in the case of his father...she didn’t know much about his father, just that Henry rarely mentioned him and that his jaw set firmly when he talked to him on the phone) and the way he seemed to take everything in stride. His optimism, his kindness.

She sort of resented the way he appeared to so easily overcome the flaws of his own parents while Natalie drowned in the ones of hers. 

“Were you planned?” 

She hadn’t meant to ask it, and wasn’t sure why she was asking. But her brain was fuzzy and her body was worn out. And her filter was hanging on by a single hinge. 

“Hmm...what?” His head snapped towards her, as though he was surprised that she had spoken. For good reason, Natalie supposed, she didn’t talk to him much at all anymore. “Like, did they plan on having me?” 

Natalie nodded, not wanting to verbally confirm she wanted to have this conversation. She was so fucked up in so many ways. 

“Yeah, very much so,” he said and he gave a weird sort of half laugh at that. “My mother doesn’t do a single thing without a thorough plan first. I’m sure there was even a science sort of thing to conceive in a way that would most assure that their child would be a boy.” 

Henry said it in the way he said most things, casually as though it mattered little to not at all. She didn’t know if it was the drugs opening her mind or making her imagine things or if she just wanted him to be as fucked up as her, but she noticed now there was a rushed quality to his words. Like if he got them out quick enough they wouldn’t matter. 

“I feel like I don’t know anything about you,” was her response. Though, that was probably her fault. Henry didn’t offer up much about his life, but he answered the few times she had asked about something. 

The car came to a stop and she realized that they were at her house already. She wanted to ask him in, to hold him close, to completely absorb him. 

Henry reached over and pressed his palm against her cheek. “You know more than anyone else.”

She was completely toxic to be around. She pulled away and got out of the car. She could feel his eyes on her but she didn’t meet his gaze. 

“Good bye,” she said before she shut the door. She wished she really meant it as such.

The fourth night, she had it down. Really, Natalie had figured out the system, written down a schedule. A plan. She had spent more effort doing that at school than she had on her actual class work. The only thing she had put more effort into than her plan had been avoiding Henry.

She was afraid that a moment alone with Henry would make him start asking the questions he had been holding back all week. Would make him point out how asinine her behavior was. Would make him worry, would make him care. 

She was drowning and didn’t want to pull him down with her. 

Natalie also avoided her house after school, just in case he showed up there. Instead she loitered at some dinner, drinking a seemingly endless amount of coffee while she finally called her dad back, in case he too got worried by her avoidance techniques. 

Plus the familiar negligence of her parents focusing on something other than her was more comforting than the furrowed brow that Henry developed when he looked at her recently. 

Natalie was a mess, mess, mess. And as she listened to her father ramble about statistics and side effects and how this was the cure to end all cures she sank into the inevitability of her genetics. 

She tried to go to a nicer part of town, a club where maybe the clientele wouldn’t be so quick to take advantage of her. But they hadn’t bothered to check her ID before turning her away, correctly assuming her underage-ness. She wasn’t surprised, not really.

None of Natalie’s plans ever worked out. 

Graduating early, Yale, the piano, not dating Henry. 

So she found herself in the familiar throb of people and darkness. It was dirty and gross and Natalie swallowed the pills to forget about those too. People groped, pushed, handed her drinks she probably shouldn’t swallow. 

And when she found herself backed against the wall with a guy way older than her and questionable body odor and most likely no sense of morals, she wonder if she should just give into the inevitably of what happened a drunk, stoned, vulnerable teenager girl at shady clubs. One more statistic. 

It wasn’t as though she were capable of fighting back at the moment anyway. 

Something inside of her must have some semblance of being alive, because the moment he touched her shoulders to pin her against the wall so she couldn’t move, she heaved up all the drugs and drinks she had consumed all over him. 

He jumped back and swore a string of curses, and threw his glass against the wall, narrowly miss hitting her. The rest of her came alive, ducking down and sneaking out of the club before anything else could happen. 

Natalie hid against the shadows of the building, and couldn’t bear to make the call she knew she was going to have to make. So instead, she took out her phone and simply texted Henry the address of the club she was at with no other information or plea.

She slid into the car when the moment she saw Henry pull up, pulling on her seatbelt and looking out the window. She wondered what his threshold for horrible was and when he wouldn’t bother to take her calls or texts anymore to come save her. Or if she would falter first, succeeding in where her mother had failed and she’d give up asking to be saved before he’d stop coming to her rescue. 

The car wasn’t moving and she could still not only feel the club all over her but watching her too. It was all in her head. She still squirmed and wanted to hide away from it. Escape from her escapism. 

Finally, she looked over at Henry who was in the mid movement of pushing his hair back with his hands. His light blond hair stuck up in odd places, but he finally pulled out onto the street. He should get his haircut, his bangs were constantly falling in front of her eyes. Back when she still attended classes, and was still present, she would spend their classes together listening to the sound of him blowing air upwards to move his bangs sporadically behind her. 

She would say it but wrong time, wrong place and she wasn’t sure if it was in her rights any longer to care about him.

Natalie wished he would go back home, leave her with the knowledge there was no one for her to call, no one there to take care of her when she refused to take care of herself. 

“Do you w…” she almost asked if he wished he still lived in London. Natalie still wasn’t ready to hear that answer. “Wonder what it would be like if you still lived in London?”

She could see the shadow of the movement of him moving his shoulders up and down in the corner of her eye. Could hear the release of a breath that was a tired sigh. 

What he must make of her now. 

“No,” Henry answered firmly. “If I had stayed in London I would be on harder drugs than you are now.”

Natalie bit her lip against saying more, though questions were threatening to tumble forth. But Henry had that set of his jaw, the one that only came around when he was on the phone with his father, unwilling to say more than necessary. 

She’d rather he yell at her, confront her. 

Natalie would rather not be in this position at all, despite the fact that she kept putting herself in this exact position. She wanted to sleep, she wanted to disappear, she wanted to ask Henry more questions, mostly she wanted him to relax his jaw and go back to being the boy that smiled when he saw her instead of the one with the furrowed brow and tilted head. 

She wondered why she never asked Henry about himself when he was sober.

Because she was selfish, she was too focused on her own issues. It wasn’t her fault. She had learned everything she was from her parents. 

The car came to a stop in her driveway and Henry shut off the engine and pulled out the key while Natalie was unbuckling her seatbelt. She hesitated for a moment, unsure of where this was going. Suddenly she wanted to rewind back in life, to take it all back, to go back to those moments alone in his bedroom before they really knew anything about each other and they both had all the potential in the world. 

Her hesitation caused him to get ahead of her and he was waiting by the door already when she arrived there. She unlocked and pushed open the door, hoping that was as far as he intended to see it through. It wasn’t and he followed her into the living room of her house. 

Natalie gave up avoidance since it was futile at this point and turned around and waited for Henry to explode. However, when she turned around all she saw was what the darkness had hid. The hair was still sticking up at random points, defying gravity in that weird boy way. But his eyes were red rimmed and sad. 

She wasn’t sure if she should pull him closer or run away and hide forever. She couldn’t think of a single other instance when anyone had ever cried over her. 

Instead she settled for an awkward pat on the front of her shoulder, before mumbling that she was fine and she was going to take a shower. She averted her gaze because if she didn’t see it then it didn’t exist. 

Then she sat on the floor of the shower as the water ran over her and bit her lip against crying as well. She thought about when she was younger and would listen to her mother cry over her brother frequently. She wasn’t supposed to know what her mother was crying about or that her mother was crying at all but Natalie had been young and intelligent and these sort of facts filtered through to her. She remembered telling herself that she wouldn’t do anything to ever make either of her parents cry over her.

She also remembered when that decree had stayed true and when it had twisted into resentment. Her mother was the only person she’d ever cry over and she had no desire to add anyone else to that list. She wasn’t even sure if she cried now if she’d be crying over Henry or herself.

Finally, she managed to stand back up, twist out the water from her hair and throw on the first pair of pajamas she came across before making her way back downstairs. To her relief, Henry had left but when she got out to the kitchen she saw he had turned on the coffee pot for her and left out her favorite mug. 

Natalie drank a cup of coffee, threw up once more and passed out on the sofa in her living room. Telling herself one more empty promise of not doing this again the next night. 

The next morning, or rather nearly afternoon, she woke up to a text from her father reminding her that him and her mother would be home early the next day.

Well there went any sort of motivation she had to be better. She wondered if she should call Henry, or at least text him. Natalie stared at her phone for so long that she wanted to throw it across the room. 

It was void of any messages or calls save for the short one her father had sent her. She wondered why Henry didn’t call or text to check up on her. She didn’t want him to bother her...but she didn’t want him to not bother her either. 

She was the worst.

The fifth night.The fifth night was the night where Natalie caved into her own failures. She didn’t make a schedule or watch what she took. She didn’t think much, she didn’t think at all. All she could see and feel was the rushing panic of her parents’ return. 

She absorbed the throb of the club, her head woozy and heavy. Overwhelming. She didn’t remember making the call, just the fuzzy knowledge that she had done it. Or she hoped she had done it. 

She had done it. Reaching out to Henry while she was crashing and burning was simply reflexive at this point. Natalie had a wandering thought that maybe she should go outside and wait for him. But she never did. 

Fresh air would be good. She felt heavy, so heavy and wanted to fall into an endless slumber. Her brain transmitted that message to her legs that started to give out and instead of meeting the floor her body met a shoulder, that lifted her back up. Her senses were overwhelmed with the scent of Old Spice, and she relaxed into the hold, knowing it was Henry. 

She could make out bits and pieces of what he was saying to her. “....fifth night….some random club...get you.” 

It sounded like a lecture, which was strange because Henry didn’t lecture. Her legs felt weak and she could feel them giving out under her but then something caught her and she felt lifted in the air.

“Natalie...Natalie.”

That wasn’t right either, because Henry hadn’t called her Natalie since the early days before he had gotten comfortable around her. 

Then it was blissfully quiet and she was grateful because the club had been too much for her and then suddenly she was startled back to consciousness by the feel of cold air against her body. She made a noise and all movement halted. 

She felt herself being let down and he reached beyond her and the sound of the car opening behind her. She was too close to him to see anything but the darkness of his jacket. Still Henry, though. She felt herself being forced down in a sitting position, though it was sideways and so her feet hung off the side of the car seat, and dangled in the street. 

Natalie looked up and saw Henry for the first time, he looked tired and worried. His frown lines ran deep and she hadn’t even been aware he had any to begin with. It took some effort but she reached up and pressed her hand against his cheek, trying to absorb some of that exhaustion and worry away. But he just reached up and pushed her hand away. He hadn’t done it roughly, but her hand stung anyway.

He squatted down in front of her and she started to get worried. This wasn’t their usual routine of driving off and not really talking about the subject matter at hand. He also didn’t look like Henry, but rather some stressed out, stern stranger. She didn’t want to look at him. 

“Natalie,” he said sharply and her attention snapped back to him. It didn’t sound like the first time he had said either. “Do I need you to bring you to the hospital?” 

He sounded more English than normal, each syllable of hospital sounding like a stand alone word. 

“No, no, no,” she said forcefully, trying to fold herself into the car. He gently pushed her legs back down. “No hospitals.” 

Natalie wasn’t her mother, it wasn’t supposed to start his early. The being dragged off to the hospital in the middle of the night. She somewhat recognized they reasoning and destination in the hospital were different for both of them...but were they really? 

Henry bit his lip and looked torn. And worried. And old. He stepped back and she wondered if he would even tell her if he were bringing her to the hospital. 

“You should probably start casting up whatever you’ve got in there, then,” he told her, in a much kinder voice than he had used with her that night. 

She thought of all the other nights she had a similar thought and had thrown up. In a club, in the privacy of her bathroom. But she didn’t want to do it out here, in the open, in front of Henry. She didn’t want him to see how truly fucked up she could be.

But she supposed she had thrown that away every time she had called him this past week. 

Maybe she should just let him bring her to the hospital. They could lock her up and she could give into the inevitability of her future. And finally everyone could know what a mess she really was. 

Not that it mattered. Her mother would still find a way to upstage her. 

She took a breath to try to steady herself but instead it just made her dry heave. She stood up to turn her back to Henry while she threw up but she wobbled and he wrapped a steadying arm around her waist and held her hair away from her face as the contents of her stomach made its way out of her. 

Natalie had never hated herself more than she did in the moment in the street of some slum in West Seattle, pumped full of drugs she couldn’t recall the names of, while her boyfriend held her upright while she threw them all up. It was clear and watery, and she couldn’t even really remember eating that day.

When she was finished, or at least nearly positive she was finished, she straightened up slightly and he let go of her hair and relaxed his hold her waist though he didn’t quite let go. 

“Okay now?” His voice was soft and gentle now, more like he typically spoke. 

Natalie wanted to turn around and bury her head in his jacket and inhale the scents of citrus and Old Spice and let herself cry. Seeking out a comfort that she thought she had gotten over needing after years of not feeling the instinct to turn to her parents. A comfort she was more than certain that Henry could provide, much more than either of her parents had ever been able to do. 

Instead of doing any of that, she shoved away from him, pushing his arm down, and hissed, “I’m fine.” before sitting back in the passenger seat. 

Henry’s shoulders slumped, and he stood there for half a moment before shutting the door for her and walking the long way around the car to avoid her puke. 

She hoped he never talked to her again.

He got in the car and reached into the back seat and pulled out a bottle of water from a bag and handed it to her. She wondered if that was something he generally kept in his car or if something he started keeping in case she needed it. Why didn’t she know such basic, little details about him? 

She unscrewed the cap and murmured her thanks before taking a drink. Maybe if she kept drinking then the car will stay silent and quick. Of course if she quickly pumped herself of liquid, then chances were she’d end up heaving all over his car. 

So she reluctantly lowered the bottle and stared at it. 

“Natalie,” he said and she cringed at the use of her full name. She shouldn’t, it was the name most everyone else called her, save her father occasionally. But Henry had always favored shorter versions of her name, and “love”. “I will come get you every time you call...but you really shouldn’t keep doing this to yourself.”

She hated how he made it sound like she was inconveniencing herself more than him. 

She turned her head, looking at the passing by buildings and then closed her eyes because the watching of movement made her nauseated. 

She started when she heard a click and felt fresh air against her face. She must have fallen asleep on the ride home. Natalie blinked awake and Henry’s face came into view. She didn’t really have time to react before his arms were under her knees and back and he had lifted her out of her seat, kicking the door shut with his foot. 

She wanted to wiggle and squirm and reject more of his help but her body was weak from the drugs, from the vomit and from general exhaustion. They got to the door, and she guessed he was more aware of her than she thought because he set her down on her feet. She fished the house key out of her pocket, and he took it from her, opening the door for her. 

He followed her inside like she knew he would and she sat down at the kitchen table as he gave her another water and put toast in the toaster. She wondered how he got so good at taking care of other people when no one seemed to take care of him. 

Maybe it’s something he picked up from a nanny or a housekeeper. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” He asked her, setting the toast down in front of her. 

She shoved it away and he pushed it back towards her. He was more stubborn than she would have ever given him credit for. 

It was on the tip of her tongue to say there was nothing to talk about, but that was too blatant of a lie even for her. Instead she said, “I don’t want to talk about anything.” 

Henry bit his lip and nodded like he did, and then turned around and went through the motions of making tea, only to realize there was no tea in her house. He settled on a pack of hot chocolate that he found instead. 

She resented how he didn’t force the issue. Didn’t make her talk. How he actively tiptoed around her in an attempt to have her not push him away. He should be wanting her to shove him away so hard that he could run away without a loss of conscience. 

So they sat at the kitchen table while she nibbled cold toast and sipped on water and he nursed a hot chocolate. And neither of them said anything. 

She checked the clock and saw she only had a few short hours before her parents were expected home. She got up without saying anything and to the shower, changing into clothes that reminded her too much of the girl that she used to be, but there wasn’t much else she had and she couldn’t be reeking of club and vomit when they got home. Not that they would probably notice.

She hated this stage of self pity and loathing she seemed stuck on. It seemed too cliched, too typical teenager. 

Natalie came back to find Henry looking weary, exhausted but still awake in the kitchen chair. He looked at her like she was a person to worry over and she hated that. 

She should thank him, she should tell him to get some rest. 

Instead she mumbled something about being like 75% less messed up, and that her parents should be home any minute. She pushed him up and away, walking him backwards to the door while he asked if she was going to call him in a tone that knew she wouldn’t. 

She leaned against the door and closed her eyes. No more clubs, no more drugs, no more Henry. Just her mother and her drama and Yale.

Everything could return to square one.


End file.
